Open Source best practices criteria

The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) Best Practices badge is a way for Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects to show that they follow best practices. Projects can voluntarily self-certify, at no cost, by using this web application to explain how they follow each best practice. The CII Best Practices Badge is inspired by the many badges available to projects on GitHub. Consumers of the badge will be able to quickly assess which FLOSS projects are following best practices and as a result are more likely to produce higher-quality secure software.

This is a great project and is receiving adoption in some circles, but given how much progress the project has made, adoption seems to be lacking. I suspect this is the case for a few reasons:

At 16 syllables, “Core Infrastructure Initiative Best Practices Badge Program” is a mouthful! It needs a shorter and catchier name so I can tell more people about it.

Checking the status of a project is a lot of work! I spent ~15 minutes adding GitHub’s Atom Editor and only got to 55%. Here’s the badge, so feel free to help finish filling it out: ). The project could benefit from more automation and autodetection.

I am Brandon Keepers, and I work at GitHub on making Open Source more approachable, effective, and ubiquitous. I tend to think like an engineer, work like an artist, dream like an astronaut, love like a human, and sleep like a baby.